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The beauty of Zoe Wetherall's work is in the structured geometry of natural and man-made forms – a natural fit for a little girl who wanted to be a bricklayer when she grew up. Wetherall, who has won nearly two dozen awards in her short career, first picked up a camera when she was eight. "I've been interested since the very beginning in photographing landscape and what was around me," she says.
Wetherall first realised those preoccupations would be her path as a photographer when vacationing in the United States; she took a hot air balloon ride over Albuquerque and looking downward, found that familiar landscapes resolved into something quite different when seen from above. She liked the way that distance sorted the noise, dirt, and humanity of the ground below into orderly, abstract designs. The resultant bird's eye views struck a chord with people, and Wetherall began to get airborne any way she could – on a birthday scenic flight, on a doorless helicopter tour in Hawaii, over Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. Exhibitions and more awards followed, and now Wetherall is based in New York.
"I really like looking straight down," she says. "It makes me look at things in a very graphic way; you are just focusing on the textures of the land and the shapes without being distorted by the angle of view. It's very simple and clean."
These days, she nurtures a design-conscious approach to her work, paying attention to the subtle patterns hidden in architecture and landscape, and using her camera to reveal their beauty.